The Little Atheist has been collecting coins in a couple of piggy banks, most recently as rewards for potty training success (in case you’re wondering, the going rate for a poopy is 2 cents). His banks were getting heavy, so we decided to open them up, empty the contents, and start a savings account for future money-teaching purposes. Imagine our surprise when, among the legal tender, we encountered this:

I googled the image, and it is indeed a “guardian angel” coin. We have no idea who put it in there. I strongly expect My Very Catholic Mother-in-Law, but there are certainly other possibilities – my mother, a babysitter, a good friend who dog sits on occasion.

I was a little irritated at first, but now it’s just amusing. The religious are, almost by definition, fairly superstitious, but this just takes it one step further. Do they really think the spirit or essence or something of an angel is held within a cheap little coin? Or does one have to bribe guardian angels to come near with pretty, shiny objects? The whole thing is just too silly.

My Very Catholic Mother-In-Law sent me this gem earlier in the week. And you thought a guy nailed to a tree was creepy…

From one pumpkin to another!!!!!!!

A woman was asked by a coworker, ‘What is it like to be a Christian?’

The coworker replied, ‘It is like being a pumpkin.’ God picks you from the patch, brings you in, and washes all the dirt off of you. Then He cuts off the top and scoops out all the yucky stuff. He removes the seeds of doubt, hate, and greed. Then He carves you a new smiling face and puts His light inside of you to shine for all the world to see.’

This was passed on to me by another pumpkin.. Now it’s your turn to pass it to other pumpkins.

I liked this enough to send it to all the pumpkins in my patch.

Just a few thoughts:

1) “He cuts off the top”?!?!?! I used to be a Christian, and I can’t find a theological analogue for what this is supposed to mean. He removes your brain (with thinking for yourself being “yucky stuff”)? A veiled reference to circumcision? WTF?

2) He apparently is kind of sloppy with that spoon, because there are as many “seeds of … hate and greed” in Christians as there are in anyone else.

3) Personally, I like a few “seeds of doubt.” They tend to make the world a little more palatable. Especially when toasted in butter and sprinkled liberally on the spice cake of irrationality that religion feeds people.

4) “He carves you a new smiling face” puts me in mind of Heath Ledger’s Joker.

So my office landlord knocks on my door the other day and informs me that he received some “mail” for me. He then smiles and proceeds to hand me this:

This bugs me for a few reasons:

1) I stopped writing letters to Santa a long time ago. A letter from “God” doesn’t get me too jazzed. Especially in office memo form.

2) This is the most trivial, shallow kind of theology around, what I call “bumper sticker Christianity.” In other words, typical for mainstream Christianity.

3) My landlord looks like a cross between Ben Franklin and Albert Einstein with a smattering of Jesus thrown in. How disappointing that someone so interesting believes such common, silly things.

4) I focus on the wonderful things present in my life right now every day, precisely because I DON’T believe a celestial father figure is looking over my shoulder and promising me treats if I behave like a good boy, or horrible eternal torture if I don’t.

According to the Secular Student Alliance, social networking site MySpace, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Coporation, has deleted the Atheist and Agnostic Group from that site. This is apparently not the first time MySpace has deleted this particular group, and not the only atheist group to be targeted. Some godless bloggers have decided to tie this event to the previously declared International Delete Your MySpace Account Day on January 30. I’m not a MySpace member, but if I was, you could be damn sure I wouldn’t be a user anymore.